Let’s deal with the banks. In the simplest possible terms, American banks borrow money from the Federal Reserve at very low rates; in these times they have virtually no interest to pay when they repay the loan. It is our money, our tax dollars they borrow. They take this money and as we know from the mortgage debacle, they take risks with it. If they win, they keep the profits to distribute to shareholders around the world. If they lose, the government, we tax payers take the hit. We bail them out. Now a few years ago we had to bail them out or face the possibly of a real depression. We needed to protect our citizens from that. But, in a real sense the banks live in a socialist world protected form loss by the government. This is NOT a free market economy.
Going forward we need government, our Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) to hold the banks responsible for abiding by the rules. If, in the future, they fail to do so, they will have to go bankrupt and the bank officers who break the law will have to go to jail. That is a free market economy.
Unfortunately, most of the young attorneys who work for the SEC go from there to Wall Street. That may explain one reason why SEC enforcement is so lax.
The corporations don’t abide by a free market economy either. They spend millions of dollars lobbying our Congressmen and Senators to pass legislation that is friendly to their bottom line. They promote loopholes in the tax law to save them money. So, in effect, corporations spend all of that money to insure that government helps them; protects them from, participation in the ups and downs of the economy just as it would in a socialist country. That is not a free market economy.
Actually, if you think about it, the Democrat platform that calls for fair and equal participation in and burden from government is the only true free market economy. By using their large financial resources to pay government to give them special advantages, the corporations are imposing on us their form of socialism under the guise of “free market economy”. How silly are those who buy into the corporate school of thought without getting an understanding of free or market or economy.
